Utah Utes gymnastics notebook: Red Rocks rewarded for taking care of business

SALT LAKE CITY — The University of Utah's gymnastics team has improved its meet score with every competition, and it is coming off the biggest jump in its score yet after reaching 196.975 last Friday.

The best payoff for the athletes may have come Monday morning, however, when coach Greg Marsden grabbed his phone around 11 to tell them to not report for the afternoon's practice.

"I just texted them and said, 'No practice today. Happy Valentine's Day,' " he said.

It was at least in part because the team has simply tended to business all season, each week taking its goals and mostly living up to them, with the progression easily reflected in advancing scores – 195.70, 195.90, 196.20, 196.50, 196.525 and Friday's 196.975.

Marsden said he had other reasons in mind, too, for giving the athletes a day off. "I try to do this occasionally just to break up the monotony and change things up. It's a good mental release. And physical."

BYE-BYE RANKINGS: Even if the third-ranked Utes improve their score again Friday, when No. 8 Michigan visits the Huntsman Center at 7 p.m. Utah will be nowhere to be found in the rankings that come out on Monday.

That's because, from now until the postseason, the rankings will be compiled by Regional Qualifying Score instead of the total season average that has been used for the first six weeks of the season.

The Regional Qualifying Score (RQS) is an average of a team's six best scores, but at least three of those scores must be from road meets. Utah has had only two away meets, so it will drop out of next week's rankings. Utah's third road meet will be Feb. 25 at Utah State, and it will return to the rankings Feb. 28.

No. 1-ranked Florida will just squeak in with its third away meet on Sunday.

Since Utah is not in a conference, Marsden has to adjust his schedule to accommodate other top teams — like Michigan, Georgia, Stanford, Florida, Nebraska or Oregon State — who are in conferences and therefore have much of their schedules set for them.

"Ideally, we wouldn't have had four weeks of home meets," Marsden said, but that's all he could work out for 2011.

Next year, when Utah moves to the Pac-12, that problem will be solved.